"This is the time."
Tommy stood in the darkness across from the house where Emily was being kept, his gaze fixed on the entrance as his fingers tightened around the handles of the handcart beside him. There were barely thirty minutes left before midnight, which meant he had thirty minutes to free Emily, reach Mei and Keith, and get all of them to the shoreline where Ryan, Rachel, and Lucy should already be waiting in the boat.
It was not much time, but that was exactly why the plan had to happen quickly. The moment anyone noticed that Emily was gone, that the guards were no longer watching the house properly, or that Mei and Keith were missing from their rooms, Brigantine would become impossible to escape. There would be guards in every street, boats searched near the shore, and Callighan's people looking for them before they even had a chance to cross the water.
